It got personal with a Roxborough man.

Church of Scientology hits back at its critics

By David O'Reilly
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Rod Keller was shocked when he arrived home Sunday night. But
he wasn't surprised.
He had spent the weekend at a demonstration in Clearwater, Fla.,
marking the 1995 death of Lisa McPherson, who died there after 17
days in the custody of the Church of Scientology.

This was Keller's seventh demonstration in five years against
Scientology, a Los Angeles-based organization that presents
itself as a therapeutic alternative to psychiatry and psychology
for the relief of human suffering.

And Scientology is not a church that turns the other cheek.

When he got home from Clearwater, Keller discovered a flier
had been posted in his Roxborough apartment building.

'THE FACE OF RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY" read the headline.

Below it was his photograph.

"Your neighbor Rod Keller is not all that he seems,"
read the text.

"This weekend he is leading a KKK-style rally against
peaceful members of a religion."

The flier was unsigned, but he soon discovered that other
demonstrators had returned from Clearwater to find nearly
identical fliers, bearing their names and photographs, near their
homes in Boston, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

The flier continued: "When he's not stirring up hatred in
the streets, Keller is poisoning the Internet by filling it full
of religious bigotry and intolerance.

"Keller's hatred puts families at risk. Next time you see
this man, recognize the face of religious bigotry," the
document said.

"A neighbor of mine took it the flier down," Keller,
36, said last week. "He just couldn't believe it. He doesn't
know much about Scientology, but all he could say was, 'This just
isn't right.' "

Keller said he started his crusade against Scientology in 1992
after finding information on it on the Internet and then
researching the organization's beliefs. John Carmichael,
president of the New York office of the Church of Scientology and
its regional spokesman, acknowledged yesterday that
Scientologists had posted the flier in Keller's apartment house.

"We would have sent one to you The Inquirer, too, if we
thought it was newsworthy," Carmichael said. "We are
eager to get the message out."

Keller and the other Clearwater demonstrators are "a
bunch of losers" whose "campaign of hate" has
prompted violence against Scientologist property, Carmichael
indicated.

He said Web sites critical of the church are filled with
"hate speech" against a "peaceful religion,"
and have prompted violence ranging from the petty (a brick
through a Scientology storefront window in Boston) to the awful:
a 1996 shooting at a Portland, Ore., church that left one member
paralyzed.

But Keller, a designer of World Wide Web sites who also
publishes a Web newsletter critical of Scientology, insists he is
"not opposed to them because of their beliefs, but because
of their medical quackery and the ways they abuse their
people."

His Web newsletter can be found by searching for
Alt.Religion.Scientology Week in Review. It is one of many sites
accusing the church of charging high fees to anyone wishing to
learn its cosmology or therapeutic techniques. Keller also
alleges the church makes a practice of confining and treating
against their will members who show signs of mental imbalance.

That forced confinement, known in Scientology as an
"Introspection Rundown," is a ritual isolation designed
to effect a kind of exorcism. Critics speculate that Lisa
McPherson's death was due to an Introspection Rundown gone wrong.

The Church of Scientology, whose spiritual headquarters are in
Clearwater, denies the charge.

According to reports in the St. Petersburg Times, McPherson,
36, originally from Dallas, a longtime Scientologist who made a
living selling Scientology services and products, began to act
strangely in the latter part of 1995.

On Nov. 18 of that year, after a minor traffic accident, she
got out of her car, removed all her clothing, and told
paramedics: "I need help. I need to talk to someone."

She was admitted to the psychiatric wing of a nearby hospital,
but an hour later members of the Church of Scientology arrived
and told doctors her religion forbade psychiatric treatment. With
McPherson's permission, the hospital released her to the care of
church members.

McPherson was taken to the Fort Harrison Hotel, which serves
as the church's worldwide spiritual headquarters. There, she
spent the next 17 days.

But on Dec. 5, she fell ill, according to Scientology
officials. She was driven to a hospital 24 miles away, where a
Scientologist physician was on duty.

She was pronounced dead 20 minutes after her arrival.

An autopsy by the county medical examiner ruled that the cause
of death was starvation and dehydration. It also found that she
appeared to have cockroach bites on her body.

Scientology officials have challenged the validity of the
report, however, calling Chief Medical Examiner Joan Wood a
"hateful liar."

McPherson's sudden death was the result of a "pulmonary
embolism," according to Carmichael. "She would have
died whether she was standing on top of Old Smokey or in the
offices of The Philadelphia Inquirer."

Carmichael said further information about Scientology is
available at local churches, or in the book Dianetics, by
founder L. Ron Hubbard, or at the church's official Web site: www.scientology.org.

Scientology was created in the 1950s and is based on the
extensive writings of Hubbard, a Los Angeles science-fiction
writer who died in 1986. It teaches, among other things, that
humans suffer because the spirits of murdered space aliens cling
to their souls. Ridding the soul of these spirits is a principal
goal of Scientology.

In 1993, the Internal Revenue Service granted tax-exempt
status to the church, which claims 8 million members. Critics
estimate the membership at 50,000.

Scientology has prompted near-hysteria in much of Germany,
where legislators talk of banning it entirely. The State of
Bavaria obliges all civil servants to swear they are not
Scientologists, and most major political parties in Germany do
not allow Scientologists as members.

Tax authorities in France, Spain and Germany treat Scientology
as a for-profit organization.

Keller insists a truer picture of Scientology -- including its
central belief that human potential is hindered by spirit beings
who attach themselves to human souls -- can be gleaned from such
skeptical Web sites as www.xenu.net or his own site.

"I have no qualm with their beliefs," he said.
"But when they do things contrary to logic, and people get
hurt, I do object."

Carmichael insists, however, that it is people such as Keller
who cause injury. "People should look at him," he said,
"and ask: 'Do we want to encourage religious bigotry at this
time of the century?' "